Character deforming with rigging and adding automatic weights
Select the armature, go to pose mode, select all bones, Ctrl A: "Apply pose as rest pose". Then you can parent your mesh to the armature. It's a good habit to apply rotation and scale (Ctrl A) to both mesh and armature also. You will have to tweak the pole angle of your IK leg ion order to get the right deforming direction of the legs. Search for Nathan Vegdahl free rigging course for advanced rigging techinques.